True teamwork is so powerful and it is rare – when team members trust each other enough to have robust debates on issues for the business and for their personal development, without letting ego or status get in the way of good debate. Patrick Lencioni discusses this behaviour in depth in his fantastic book, ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’. Does your team have full and frank discussions that generate robust debate and challenge new ideas and thinking?
- The type of conversation that can get heated and stay controlled at the same time?
- Where everyone knows the conversation is to raise things up, not pull each other down?
It is a rare workplace that has it – and if you don’t it can be practised and learnt. Many businesses have teams that don’t have the basic tenets of trust between team members – or leadership team members – so there is very little of the proper, robust conversations that lead to great outcomes.
It is bogged down in ‘artificial harmony’ or petty personal exchanges that avoid the real issues around execution and accountability.
Will your team stay ‘good’, ‘average’, ‘6 out of 10’ for 2024? Or will you challenge them to be 8+? Will your teamwork be thought of as a competitive advantage?
Want to make a difference to your Executive Team for 2024?
Want to make a difference for Executive or Leadership Team performance for 2024? Then undertake Developing Leaders High-Performance Team workshops. The workshops are a challenging series of events to build your teamwork and are not for the faint hearted – and like most things the value is in the work that is completed and the discussions that take place. Avoiding the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team takes effort, particularly from the leader, which is why so many team shy away and continue to under-perform.